While exploring the world and the associated conservation issues I've been noting down my reflections and discoveries. Some posts are more organized while others are simple notes.

I generally focus on conservation issues effecting biodiversity, land use/abuse, research, and job opportunities that I have come across. Most of the opportunities come from the Opps page and you can click on the button below to take you there.

I learned a little about Gentrification, Group Socialization Theory, and Social Rejection Theory this week. And here is a sea turtle that is as surprised about all this as I am.

Artists and Enviros as First Wave of GentrificationThis is not my field and not what I am knowledgeable about but sitting in the Grad Lab I had a quick conversation with a colleague studying Gentrification. Actually, these quick side conversations about fields not my own are becoming my favorite part of grad school; I’ve had conversations about the physics of the Northern Lights, material engineering, and industrial concrete randomly that have opened me up to worlds I would not have considered. I digress: he knocked my socks off explaining that artists and enviro folks are often times the first wave of gentrification for various reasons. For urban planning and developing multiple beneficial uses I can only imagine how challenging this must be. On one hand you are trying to create a better and more liveable place for more people and on the other, an integration of socioeconomic dimensions (accommodating and co-creating opportunities for poor people) and oftentimes a cultural history. Again, I know nothing about this but I found some interesting articles about it:

Group Socialization TheoryFrom the book The Nurture Assumption by Harris, this theory disrupts the nature vs nurture dichotomy as false to start with. The dichotomy is necessary but insufficient. Harris shows that children become socialized and their personality gets modified during development mostly by their peers. Children get their ideas of how to behave by identifying with a group and taking on its attitudes, behaviors, speech, and styles of dress and adornment; most of them do this automatically and willingly. The relationship with the parents and the genes they inherent are important and help establish baselines and what’s possible but the integration and growth within peer group has a significantly larger influence upon the child’s development. She also distinguishes two important skills: skills at friendship and the ability to navigate a group. Almost everyone will develop friendships but that rarely has lasting developmental impacts. However, the capacity to integrate within a group has demonstrably larger impact upon a person’s growth through childhood and adolescence into adulthood. I need to play with this idea a lot more before I share more because I think it is relevant to me personally and the work I do…I think…

Social Rejection TheoryTo justify the time spent on long runs and lifting weights I listen to audiobooks. I love it. A lot of the time this is how I get my fiction fix. Lately I’ve been on The Great Courses kick and learning about classical music and ancient philosophy. For some weird reason, Audible took those subjects and recommended I listen to: Social – Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect by Matthew Lieberman. I don’t get it but whatever. Coincidentally, we just read an article in my Human Behavior class about how Social Cognition Theory, which this book is based on, has lacked empirical evidence in the real world. I don’t know whether that’s true or not but the ideas are pretty fascinating. The most interesting to me is the Social Rejection Theory part of it. Basically, it says that when researchers have done studies with people fMRI and put them in situations where they are socially rejected, the same parts of the brain light up as when you feel pain. Leiberman’s wife, Eisenberger, is the lead researcher on this (I love science power couples) and posits that feeling social pain is the same as physical pain neurochemically. I’d quote the book but it’s hard to stop running every five minutes to take notes while listening to it. Anyway, you can’t point to the pain as if you were hit in the arm but your brain feels the pain when a group dismisses you. Super crazy. The implications of this are nuts. One of the ways I’m thinking is what motivates and what prevents people from conservation or what they call Pro-Environmental Behavior. If you, say, decide to do xeric landscaping in a community with green lawns, you become the outsider. Depending on your baseline for handling rejection and how receptive your neighborhood is you may feel pain for being different. Or, say you are vegetarian in the US South where BBQ is one of the food groups…These are small scale examples but I’m curious to see how these impact larger issue things like policy support, conspicuous consumerism, or influencing expenditures on sustainability.